Free The Wrong Hostage by Elizabeth Lowell Page B

Scotland, in 1956,” Faroe said, handing Grace lukewarm coffee in a clean-enough cup. “She started out as a herring boat in the North Sea. If you dig down between the hull planks, you can still find fish scales.”
    “I never figured you for a herring fisher.”
    “I’m rigging her for blue-water cruising. She only does ten knots, but she can keep that up for months at a time.”
    “Are you single-handing her?” Grace asked, then realized she was holding her breath for the answer. Stupid, stupid, stupid .
    Faroe nodded.
    She told herself she wasn’t relieved. But she was. “Steele said you’d retired.”
    “Yes.” The word as closed as Faroe’s expression.
    She didn’t take the hint. “I can’t imagine you idling away the next forty or fifty years.”
    Neither could Faroe, but it wasn’t a topic he wanted to discuss with anyone, including himself. If that made him pigheaded, so be it. A man was entitled to the occasional indulgence.
    Silence grew.
    “We never were very good at small talk,” he said, gesturing toward the little chart table in the center of the salon. “Do you have a ransom note?”
    Grace sat at the small table. “Nothing that obvious. Carlos and Hector simply made it real clear that Lane wasn’t leaving without Ted’s—my ex-husband’s—signature on the form. Unfortunately, Ted is in the wind somewhere, not returning calls or e-mails. He’s not just ducking me, either. I’m getting calls from angry people at all hours of the day.”
    Faroe nodded. “Tell me about Carlos and Hector and your last visit with your son.”
    Grace sipped, organized her thoughts, and gave Faroe the same presentation she’d given Steele. Faroe listened intently, his eyes focused on the grounds at the bottom of his own coffee cup, a fortune-teller looking for something in the murk.
    He’s learned to listen, she realized. Sixteen years ago, he talked more. At least with me .
    Not that they’d spent a whole lot of time talking.
    “…and then I drove back to the border as fast as I could,” she said. She’d been crying silently all the way, but that wasn’t something Faroe needed to know. “I wasted hours calling everyone I could think of. Then I called your cell phone. St. Kilda answered.”
    Faroe swirled the cup, drained the last dregs, and looked up at her.
    Grace went still. His eyes were still that astonishing cool green, almost the color of a jade pendant she’d worn the night of their first date. She’d understood from the moment she first saw him that she would sleep with him, even though she knew better. All her life she’d been a dutiful, good girl.
    But not with Joe Faroe.
    He’s the worst mistake I ever made .
    And the best .
    “Sounds like Colombia, not Mexico,” Faroe said finally.
    “What do you mean?”
    “C’mon, Grace. You’re not that naïve.”
    “I’ve never been to Colombia and only rarely to Mexico,” she said.
    Faroe shrugged. “Kidnap and extortion are a way of life in Colombia.”
    She swallowed hard. “You have a way of making it sound so…”
    “Ordinary?”
    “Yes.”
    “It’s much more common than you want to know,” Faroe said. “There are a lot of places in the world where hostage-taking is a way of life. Didn’t Steele tell you about what he so elegantly refers to as ‘the Sanguinary Exchange’?”
    “What a grim phrase. I guess he was too much of a diplomat to use it with me.”
    “Too bad. The term describes what you lawyers might call an exceptional business model.”
    “Meaning?” she challenged. He still hates lawyers. Why am I not surprised?
    “When a businessman can’t rely on contracts and statutory protections to guarantee performance, he finds other ways. If he fronts, say, a ton of cocaine to a smuggler, he expects the smuggler to put up a son or a daughter or a wife in return.”
    Grace grimaced. “All right. Yes. Of course I’ve heard about such things, but not here, not as part of American life.”
    “And you don’t